The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1887-03-31
DIR. TALMAGE IN THE WEST.
"No Man Cared for My Soul."-Cheer
for the Disheartened.

| 10 henuer Assistance Ii Iney Are NOT
Asked-n You Miss Heaven 1t VIII Be
Your Own Fault.
KANSAS CITY, Mo-, March 20.-The
Rev. T De Witt Talmage, D. D., preached
in the Second Presbyterian Church OF this
place this morning.
His subject was "Cheer for the Disheart-
ened," and his text, Psalms cxli. V. 4:
"No man cared for my soul" DR.. Talmage
said:
David, the rubicund lad, had become the
battle-worn warrior. Three thousand
armed men in pursuit of him, he had
hidden in the cave of Engedi, near the
coast of the Dead Sea. Uutterly tagged
out with the pursuit, as you have often
been worn out with the trials of life, he sat
down and cried out: "No man cared for my
SOUL"
If you should fall through hatchway,
or slip from a scatfolding, or drop through
a skyight, there would be hundreds of
people who would come around and pick
up your body and carry it to your home or
to the hospital. l saw a great crowd of
people in the street, and l asked: "What is
the matter?" and 1 found out that Door
| laboring man had fallen under sunstroke;
and all our eyes were filed with tears at
the thought of his distracted wife and his
desolated home.
We are all sympathetic with physical
| disaster, but how little sympathy for spir-
! itual woes! There are men in this house
who have come to midlife who have never
| yet been once personally accosted about
their eternal welfare. A great sermon
| dropped into an audience of hundreds Of
thousands will do its work; but if this
world is ever to be brought to God it will
be through little sermons preached to pri-
vate Christians, to un audience of one.
The sisters letter postmarked at the viii
lage-the word uttered in your hearing, half
of smiles and half of tears-the religious
postscript to business letter-the card left
at the door when you had some kind Of
trouble-the anxious look of some one
across church aisle while an earnest SER
mon was being preached, swung you into
the kingdom of God. But there are hun
dreds of people in this house who will take
the word that David used in the past tense,
and employ it in the present tense, and cry
out: mo man cares for my soul"
You feel as you 90 out day by day in the
tug and jostle of life that it is every man
for himself. You can endure the pressure
of commercial airs, and would consider
it almost imper,inent for any one to ask
you whether yOu are making or losing
money. But 4 re have been times when
you would have drawn your check for thou
sands of dollar il some one would only help
your soul out Of its perplexities. There
are questions about your higher destiny
that ache, and distract, and agonize you at
times. Let no one suppose that because
you are busy all day with hardware, or dry
goods, or groceries, or grain, that your
thoughts are no longer than your yard
Il IL. 1. i n
the store counter. When you speak once
about religious things you think 5000
times. They call you a wording. OF
course you ara industrious and keep busy,
but you have had your eyes opened to the
realities of the next world. You are not
fool. You know better than any one can
tell. You know that few years at most
will wind up your earthly engagements,
and that you will take residence in dis
tant sphere where all your business adroit-
ness would be q superhuity. You some-
times think till your head aches about
great religious subjects. You go down the
street with your eyes fixed on the pave
ment oblivious of the passing multitudes,
your thoughts gone on eternal expedition.
You wonder if the Bible is true, how much
Of it is literal and how much is tigurative
law, if Christ be God, if there is any,
thing like retribution, if you are immortal,
if resurrection will ever take place, what
the occupation of your departed kindred is,
what you will be 10000 years from now.
With a cultured placidity of countenance
you are on fire with agitations of soul. Oh,
this solitary anxiety of your whole lifetime!
You have sold goods to or bought them
from Christian people for ten years, and
they have never whispered one word of
spiritual counsel. You have passed up and
down the aisles Of churches with men who
knew that you had no hope Of heaven, and
talked about the weather and about your
physical health, and about everything but
that concerning which you most wanted to
hear them speak, viz, your everlasting
spirit. Times without number you have
felt in your heart, if you have not uttered
1t with your lips, mo man cares for my
soul" |
There have been times when you were
especially pliable on the great subject of |
religion. It was so, for instance, after |
you had lost your property. You had a
great many letters blowing you up for |
being unfortunate. You showed that there |
had been q concatenation of circumstances |
and that your insolvency was no fault of |
yours. Your creditors talked to you as |
though they would have 100 cents on the !
dollar or your life. Protest after protest |
tumbled in on your desk. Men who used |
to take your hand with both of theirs and |
shake it violently, now pass you on the |
street with an almost imperceptible nod. !
After six or eight hours of scalding bust |
ness anxiety you go home and you shut |
the door, and throw yourself on the sofa |
and you feel in state of despair. You !
wish that some one would come in and !
break up the gloom. Everything seems to !
be against you-the bank against you. !
Your creditors against you. Your friends !
suddenly become critical against you. All /
the past against you. All the future |
against you. You make reproachful out |
cry: mo man cares for my SOUL"
There was another occasion when all /
the doors of your heart swung open for
sacred influences. A bright light went out
in your household. Within three or four
days there were compressed sickness,
death obsequies, You were 80 lonely that
100 people coming into the house did not
break up the solitariness. You were al
most killed with the domestic calamity. A
few formal, perfunctory words of consola-
ton were uttered on the stairs before YOU
went to the grave; but you wanted some
one to come and talk over the whole
matter, and recite the alleviations, and de-
cipher the lessons of the dark bereave-
ment. No one came. Many time YOU
could not sleep until or 8 o'clock in the
and then your sleep was o
troubled dream, in which were re-enacted
all the scene of sickness, and parting, and
Oh, what days and nights
they we're! No man seemed to care for
your soul.
There was another occasion when your
heart was very susceptible. There was
great awakening. There were hundreds
Of people who pressed into the kingdom
Of God; some of them acquaintance,